Yeaaah, I really wanna avoid that pitfall ever happening again if possible, haha. I know sometimes it’s unavoidable, and in this case it kind of was initially because this is the only project I’ve ever made where I didn’t actually pick the voice actors myself! That was because it was a big rush to make the original self-contained story within a 1-month jam timeframe though, and my friend was doing me a massive favour at the time by casting and directing the VAs he found.
At the time, I knew I wanted to massively expand on the project, but I was also very aware of the fact that wouldn’t be a possibility for probably years since I wouldn’t be able to afford voice acting outside of the jam for all the characters I eventually hoped to add. So I sort of thought to myself, right, let’s just focus on getting this segment done for the jam, and the rest is a challenge for the future x3 I didn’t really even think anyone would play the game, haha. So I kinda figured I had forever to gradually raise funds and work on the project over years.
Manly somehow found the jam verison of the game a loooong time after it was originally released, and as soon as the video went out, it was like my page just exploded xD I was extremely confused because all I could see were massive spikes in my itch analytics and I had no idea why until someone told me x3 So yeah, I couldn’t really believe it at first and I was super hyped about it, but then it kinda hit me that suddenly people were seeing my rough little self-contained jam game and I panicked because it didn’t represent what I wanted to do with the project as a whole.
That’s why I tried to make the new demo as quickly as I could, in the hope that anyone checking out the project cos of Manly might realise that the version Manly played was a very basic, bite-sized bit of what I hoped would be a much larger project. I don’t think the new demo does a great job of showing the full extent of what I hope to do with the game, but it’s better than the original jam version at least I guess.
I didn’t know that about the Your Boyfriend creator :o I remember seeing posts and stuff about a demo for the game, but I didn’t really follow it closely because it wasn’t my cup of tea. That’s a shame it got stuck in development hell like that though >.<
But yeah, I definitely don’t wanna run into any problems with VA again because it would be a huge waste of time and money to get only parts of the story recorded only to find the VAs can’t continue with the rest in the future :(
With Castoria's VA for example, she’s not got any links and is credited with a false name because my voice director friend who cast her said she wasn’t comfortable with the steamier lines and stuff, which is totally fair enough, but had I been in charge of casting, I would never have cast someone who wasn’t comfortable with the content in the first place >.< And then yeah, the voice director and I have grown apart as time has passed and we don’t even really speak now, which is a shame. I guess money is partly why, which makes it suck even more :( But I'm glad that he's at least been able to move on and up with his career and get paid properly to do stuff rather than just helping out people like me who can't afford to pay a proper wage x3
As much as it sucks to have to recast, at least it’s only a small portion of the content I guess! And getting all of the writing finished first means whoever is cast in the future should be able to complete the entire route script :3
I always wonder if things might have worked out differently if Manly happened to find and play the game closer to when it was initially released for the jam! I think it was partly because the gap between the original release and the attention it later got possibly made things more complicated, haha. But regardless, the game will eventually be finished so I suppose it doesn’t matter :D
If I had a different brain and found it easier to switch between stuff, I’d probably have been able to progress faster with DD by now x3 but because I had it in my head that I was gonna be doing X, Y, and Z first, it’s like when I tried to deviate from that, it didn’t really work because every time I tried to work on DD, I had all the other stuff in the back of my mind haunting me x3 I think now that I’ve finally decided on a proper schedule and to get CiQ finished and released as I’d always intended before getting to DD, I should hopefully be able to plan things better. Cos last year, I think part of why I did so many jams was because I was trying to block out thinking about DD and CiQ because while I wanted to work on DD, I knew I wouldn’t be able to effectively with CiQ still unfinished, but rather than just get to working on CiQ, I tried to run away from it >.< I feel like I’ve finally got things under control a bit better now!
Thank you for your kind words and support :3 Hope you've been able to have a lovely weekend!